[ trigger warning: canon-typical homophobia/homophobic language ]

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𝐛𝐨𝐲𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐜𝐫𝐲
𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐞
𝟏:𝟓𝟑 ————|——— 𝟏:𝟏𝟒
♯ 𝐀 ♯ 𝟎𝟖
𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐞 : ▮▮▮▮▮▮▯▯▯
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Friday, Nov. 11, 1983.

"IT'S NOT WHAT it looks like!" Corey blurts, wide-eyed and staring up nervously at Briggs. She shoves her hand in her jacket pockets like she can wrap up whatever schemes and secrets she's a part of in each fist and tuck them away, out of sight, out of mind.

"What—" Briggs sputters, throwing his hands in the air. "What do you think this looks like? I don't know what the hell this looks like. I'm pretty sure I just watched a kid throw Lucas across the junkyard by banshee-screaming, so you tell me."

"Briggs, what are you doing here—"

"No, you don't get to ask that right now," Briggs interrupts, staring his sister down with what he hopes is somewhat of an authoritative glare. "Explain."

Mack stoops to Lucas' level, knees in the packed dirt of the junkyard, and sits him up against the metal. A few seconds later, he blinks awake blearily.

"Lucas!" Mike cries in relief. "Lucas, you okay?"

"Lucas. Lucas, how many fingers am I holding up?" Dustin asks, holding up three. "How many fingers?"

"Let me see your head," Mike demands, reaching out for Lucas, but Lucas slaps his hand away and shouts, "Get off of me!" His voice is sharp, but Briggs doesn't miss the waver—the kid is dangerously close to tears.

"Guys," Mack says firmly, nudging the boys away from Lucas. "Give him some space." Lucas glares over Mack's shoulder at Mike and Dustin, Corey still too shocked at being caught in whatever this is to notice the goings-on behind her. Mack makes Lucas stand and walk and follow his finger and for some reason, he listens. He seems fine, physically, just understandably upset because a girl just threw him into a car without touching him.

God, what has Briggs' life come to?

"I'm leaving," Lucas announces when Mack is through with him, and though Mack purses his lips in objection, he says nothing to stop him. Maybe being friends with Briggs has taught him to pick his battles.

"Lucas, come on!" Mike exclaims, voice pitched in a half-whine, half-plead. Briggs has to bite his lip to keep from snapping about hurrying up so Corey can explain what the fuck just happened.

"Let him go," Dustin demands, holding Mike back. Corey facepalms. Lucas crosses the junkyard.

"Man, let him go," Dustin says again, mostly to himself. Mike relents, and the boys watch Lucas' orange jacket as he retreats across the yard.

And then Mike looks around in a panic. Corey gasps at the same time he voices his realization. "Where's El?"

Glancing between the kids, the junked cars, and the sprawling treeline, Briggs realizes the blonde girl disappeared. And something clicks in the back of his memory. El. Ellie. The new girl, the one Corey told him about in the car. Oh.

"El!"

"Eleven!" Dustin shouts. Eleven?

"El!" Mike shouts. A chorus of the girl's apparent name echoes in the open air. "Eleven! El! Eleven!" They're going by numbers now? He gets the novelty of the walkie-talkies, but code names are a little cliché even for Corey.

"Eleven," he says flatly, voicing his thoughts. "What're you, seven? Thirteen?"

Corey flips him off.

Briggs shoots a glance at Mack, who shrugs. Their conversation is silent but comprehensive—do we need to find the girl? Maybe she's dangerous. Not our problem? Not our problem. Great, let's go.

"Okay," Briggs exhales, turning back to the rest of the kids. He makes a looping motion with one hand, pointing back toward the railroad tracks. "Walk and talk. You're going to tell me everything."

▮▮▮

"Okay, hold on," Briggs sighs, rubbing his hands over his face in exhaustion and exasperation. The information just imparted on both himself and Mack by Corey, Mike, and Dustin in turn makes his head spin and his heart race, but mostly just makes him want to go to sleep and forget all of it. "So. You found a kid with magic powers in a thunderstorm, and she told you Will isn't dead, and now you're trying to find a door to another dimension—"

"A gate," Dustin interjects, and Briggs ignores him, though it's impressively difficult with the way his mess of curls has become a literal cloud above his head. At some point, Corey took it upon herself to steal his hat and pull it low over his face, obscuring her features and leaving Dustin with a veritable nest of hair.

"—to go get him from the dark version of Hawkins where he's trapped."

Corey nods, her expression entirely drawn and serious. Even for her, this is too elaborate to be some sort of prank.

And even if it wasn't... Briggs hates to admit it, but it does explain some things. Namely, where that monster came from.

There's no way in hell Briggs is about to tell these reckless kids, but he's pretty sure that if there is some kind of doorway to Dark Hawkins, he knows exactly where it is and who's hiding it. It's at the end of a path of stupid white vans.

And he thinks he knows what came out of Dark Hawkins when Will went in.

"So if that's where Will is stuck right now," Mack asks Dustin, "do you think Barb could be there, too?"

Briggs feels a stab of something in his chest, something tight. He's been a shit friend lately. Mack is worried sick about this girl and he's barely even asked about it.

"She could be," Dustin says thoughtfully. "We'll find her, dude. We'll find both of them." He fist-bumps Mack.

The kids didn't want to be honest at first, their long-winded confession mostly consisting of Mike elbowing the other two in the ribs every time they gave away too much information, but at Corey's insistence they finally dropped the act and came clean. Briggs kind of wishes now that he didn't ask.

Mack looked subtly impressed, but Briggs felt like his stomach was caving in on itself at the idea of Corey risking her life for this, not even telling him—if she'd died, gotten hurt, gotten captured, transported to this Dark Hawkins somehow—he never would have even known why.

But that's how she probably feels, isn't it? How Jon feels about his brother. How Mack feels about Barb.

"Okay, listen," he says, drawing the attention of the circle of kids. "This shit is real. You guys get how dangerous it is to go looking for it, right?" Dustin nods solemnly, and Corey casts her gaze to the ground as Mike puffs out his chest indignantly.

"We can handle it," he insists.

"You can't—"

"Don't tell me what I can and can't do!"

"Guys," Mack interrupts. "Listen. Fact is, even if you find that gate thing, we don't know what's on the other side. We don't know that Will is there. We don't know that Barb is there. We don't even know if humans can survive in this—this Dark Hawkins."

"The Upside Down," Mike informs him.

"Okay, the—the Upside Down. We don't know if that's a human-friendly place. It really doesn't sound like it."

"We have to try," Corey says firmly. Dustin nods approvingly, and Mike stares up at Briggs like told you so. Briggs considers reevaluating his moral stance on kicking kids in the shin.

This is a losing battle and Briggs knows it.

"What about the girl?" he asks. Mike stills. "Eleven, or whatever. Do we need to worry about her going on a screaming-throwing-people-into-cars rampage across town?"

"No," Mike says, at the same time Dustin shrugs and says, "Maybe." Mike elbows him in the ribs and Dustin squeaks in indignation. Briggs runs the heels of his hands down his face for what feels like the thousandth time today, wondering if by now he's carved paths down his cheeks that have him looking like a middle-aged teacher.

He doesn't know what to do. He can't watch all these kids twenty-four hours a day, and he knows the second he takes his eyes off of them they're going to go magic-gate-hunting.

All he can do is kill this son-of-a-bitch monster before it gets to them. Before they find out it even exists.

"Listen, we need to get home," Briggs sighs, watching the sun dip below the tree line. "Just—God, don't do anything stupid. If you're gonna jump through a magic portal, take a goddamn high schooler with you, okay?"

Dustin shrugs noncommittally. That's not at all reassuring.

"You find the girl, you let Corey know," he continues, then glances meaningfully at his sister. "And you let me know."

Corey crosses her arms over her chest and nods. Briggs jerks his chin in the direction of the Jeep. "Let's go."

As they get in the car and Briggs pulls off the side of the road, everything going on in Hawkins runs through his veins in toxic, concentrated bursts of energy, criss-crossing and blurring together in every part of his body. Monster on the loose. Missing superpowered girl. Dark Hawkins. White vans. Corey, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, fighting evil they know nothing about. Will. Barb. Mack. Jon and Nancy roaming the woods with a gun, hoping for a kill.

God, he hopes they're okay.

Steve.

Not now.

The silence of the car seems to be suffocating Mack slowly, and he turns up the volume on the radio. In the rearview mirror, Corey stares resolutely at the window, avoiding Briggs' gaze.

Block after block, he almost says something. He wants to ask about the monster, theorize about what Nancy and Jon are doing right now. But if Corey doesn't know anything is loose in the woods on a murderous rampage, he doesn't want to change that.

"Call me," Mack says as he wrenches the door open in his driveway, then lowers his voice and hesitates, eyes flickering to Corey. "If they—you know."

If Jon and Nancy call.

"I will," he promises. He watches Mack make his way up the driveway and backs out, remaining silent as Corey climbs over the center console into the passenger seat instead of getting out the door like a normal human being.

"Stop getting your dirt all over my car," Briggs says half-heartedly.

"Stop following me to junkyards, then."

Touché.

Halfway down Cherry, Corey reaches out and turns the radio down. Briggs bristles. He doesn't do quiet, hates driving without anything in the background. But Corey is biting her bottom lip like she's going to say something, and if he's ever going to talk some sense into her, the time is now.

"I can't stop," she says after a moment, staring straight out the window. Briggs glances at her, notes the set of her jaw, her fast-blinking eyes. "You know I can't stop."

He clenches the wheel tighter, white-knuckled against the cool leather.

"You know I can't let you keep going," he says, voice coming out harsher than he wants it to, a little grating. Corey whips her head to look at him.

"You know you can't control me," she bites back. "You know my best friend is missing and everyone thinks he's dead and I can save him and I don't care if you're standing in my way, I'm gonna find him. There's nothing you can do about it."

"Corey, you could die!"

"I know!" she's shouting now, tears pooling in her eyes, and Briggs stops at a light and turns to look at her completely.

His little sister. His little sister, with her dirty shoes and messy hair and annoying habits and burnt popcorn and shelves overflowing with well-loved books. He shut her out for so long.

He wasted so much time.

But like this, with the red of the stoplight washing over her face, he looks at her and realizes that at some point she started to grow up. Her hair reaches well past her shoulders, and her facial features are more defined, cheekbones framing blue eyes made murky by the dim light, and... she looks like Danny, Briggs realizes. She looks just like her dad.

And she's staring at him like she's ready for an argument she knows she can win, and she's not begging, not pleading, not asking. She's telling him how it is and he has to deal with it, because she's a kid but she's not a kid.

The light turns green, and Briggs doesn't move.

"I know," she repeats, a leveled-out whisper. "But so could Will."

And Briggs knows he's holding back, too. Knows that Jon and Nancy are somewhere out there hunting for something that shouldn't exist. Knows that Mack is losing sleep over a red-haired girl lost to the depths of the impossible. Knows that he can't stop Corey looking for Will any more than he can stop any of this.

"I don't want anything to happen to you," he chokes out, hating the burning in his throat, eyes, cheeks, hating that he doesn't feel like he can do shit against any of this.

"I gotta find him."

"I know, Corey," he whispers. "Just—damn it. Okay." He breathes, slow, in and out. "Just—if you're gonna do this, if you know—if you think it's gonna be dangerous. Just. Ask for help. Please. I'll come with you. I just can't let you—I can't deal with you going to fucking Nightmare Land by yourself, okay?"

He expects her to protest, to say I'm not alone, to defend herself with the presence of her crazy friends or say she didn't need Briggs before and she doesn't need him now. But Corey is just silent for a long, charged moment. And then she peers up at Briggs in the dark of the vehicle and holds his gaze.

"Okay."

▮▮▮

The phone almost gives Briggs a heart attack.

It rattles against the wall with a shrill sound too close to an alarm clock for Briggs' liking, sending him scrambling for purchase on the wood floor as he shoots to his feet from where he'd been waiting against the wall. He must have started dozing off.

"Hello?" he says into the phone immediately, gripping the spiral cord too tight with his right hand. He bounces on the balls of his feet, feeling the chill of the ground through a hole in his sock. It has to be Jon or Nancy.

"Briggs."

Thank God.

"Hey," he says to Jon, glancing at the clock across the hall. Eleven o'clock at night. "You good?"

"Yeah," Jon says, voice deliberately low. "I'm at Nancy's."

"She okay?"

"I mean. Yes and no," Jon says. "We found it. Nancy found it, I mean. Or it found her. It was—God, it was horrible. She's freaked out."

"Shit, where? What happened? Is it dead?" He thinks of the monster with its missing face, splayed body unmoving on the forest floor, blood seeping from bullet wounds—is its blood even red? Does it even bleed?

Jon sighs, long and low. "No. It's not. She like, went through a tree with this spider-web shit on the outside, and—"

"What?"

"I don't even know where to start, dude. Can we meet up tomorrow and catch up on everything? I'm fuckin' beat and I don't want to wake up Nance's parents."

Briggs wants to punch a hole through the wall beside the phone at the idea of the monster still running around. He wants it to be dead, gone, over, one less threat to worry about as Corey searches the town for danger. But it's not. It's not dead, and nobody's safe.

But it's late and the halls are dark and Jon sounds exhausted, and punching a hole in the wall isn't going to help. So he takes a deep breath, lets it out with his face angled away from the receiver, and then says teasingly, "Nance?"

Jon sputters unintelligibly. "I–"

"Wait," Briggs interrupts. "Are you staying there?"

Jon says nothing for a moment and Briggs thinks he's probably shrugging. Then he catches himself and says, "I don't know. Like I said, she's freaked. I don't think she wants to be alone right now."

"Where is she?"

"Shower. You know, monster muck. Blood and shit."

"Jesus."

"Yeah."

"You're not hurt though, right? Either of you?" Briggs wraps the phone cord around his fingers, lets it go, does it again.

"We're fine," Jon says quickly. "I guess. Fine as you can be when... you know."

"Right."

"What did the kids do?"

Briggs sighs heavily, leaning against the wall. What a loaded question that is. "Found a superhero girl who can throw people."

"What the fuck." Jon doesn't even bother saying it like a question. At this point, their lives are so unbelievable that the statement is more along the lines of wow, okay than what.

"Tell you tomorrow."

"Time and place?"

"Uh." Briggs racks his brain. Somewhere public, busy enough on a Saturday morning but not packed, somewhere outside their homes where they can be seen but not paid attention to. "George's? On Main? Ten or something."

"Okay. Okay, yeah, I'll pick you up. Call Mack for me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, sure." Briggs closes his eyes, letting the world go dark for just a minute.

Jon exhales shakily. "Okay. See you."

"Yeah. Okay. See you."

Jon hangs up first, and after tossing the phone back into place Briggs sinks down against the wall, pressing his forehead to his knees. God, he's tired. He's so tired.

But he's not done yet.

▮▮▮

Saturday, Nov. 12, 1983.

Briggs decides to deal with the clusterfuck that is his life one thing at a time. So he spends the first part of his morning trying to come to terms with the fact that his little sister has befriended some sort of comic-book-superpower runaway child. A missing comic-book-superpower runaway child.

Briggs understands Mack's earlier comment, the one about this just being some sort of deranged acid trip. God, that would be easier, wouldn't it?

So there's a monster living in some sort of weird other-world, Nancy almost died, they're no closer to figuring out how to catch this thing,  and worse, his sister is involved in all of it.

She's still sleeping—Briggs didn't take Ma's word for it this time, quietly clicking open the door and making sure she was really there. He can't confront her now about her plans for the day, and his debate about whether it's worth her wrath to wake her is interrupted by Jon honking his horn in front of Briggs' house.

Ma tugs aside the yellow curtain on the kitchen window, noting Jon's car, as Briggs jogs back into the kitchen.

"Where are you off to?"

"Taking Jon to breakfast," he says through a yawn, which isn't a lie. "With Mack. See if he needs anything."

He does. He needs help killing an interdimensional monster. But Ma doesn't really need the dirty details this morning.

"We'll probably go back to his after. Might not be home until later."

"That's sweet," Ma says, leaning over to ruffle Briggs' hair. "Tell Joyce I say hello."

"Will do," Briggs says. He has no plans to see Joyce today.

After pulling his windbreaker over a striped tee and tugging on his Vans, Briggs hops in Jon's car next to Mack. Nancy has already taken up residence in the passenger seat.

"Happy monster murder day," Mack says flatly, throwing up a peace sign and then looking pointedly at Briggs' unbuckled seatbelt. Their unspoken stare-off lasts all of two seconds before Mack opens his mouth to tattle to Jon, and Briggs slaps Mack in the arm before the words get out. He huffs and buckles his seatbelt as Jon throws the car into drive.

The Galaxie pulls up to a row of slanted curb parking, just to the right of George's Family Diner. It's small, a little beat-down and crushed between the other Main Street businesses, not somewhere Briggs frequents. But for this, they don't need to risk being overheard.

Linoleum countertops stained with age are pale against the red seats of the booths, and a frazzled-looking girl behind the counter glances at them and scans the room before waving at an open booth near the door. Nancy slides in first and Jon immediately sits beside her. Briggs has to force himself not to comment on it as he takes a seat next to Mack.

The waitress swings by the table, hair in a messy bun with a half-hearted smile on her face. She's pretty even with exhaustion practically dripping from the ends of her dark hair. A yellow waitress dress obscured by a half-apron is stained with a recent-looking ketchup spill.

He'll give her a good tip. Customer service sucks.

Laura, her name tag reads.

"Nance! Hey," she girl says, and Nancy smiles warmly.

"Hey."

"What can I get started for you?"

Mack immediately announces that if he doesn't caffeinate himself he'll die, and after scribbling orders down on a notepad and promising to get Mack a pot of coffee before he passes away at the table, Laura heads to the other side of the room.

"Friend of yours?" Briggs asks Nancy, and she nods with a small smile, looking at her behind the counter.

"Okay," Jon sighs, putting his elbows on the table. "Who's first?"

After Nancy recounts in an impressively level voice the absolute horror movie that she starred in last night, Briggs and Mack take turns explaining the girl—Eleven—and her crazy powers and the kids' theory about the gate.

"She threw Lucas into a car," Nancy says slowly, brows raised, "with her mind."

Mack nods resolutely.

"Fuckin' Supergirl," Briggs says.

"Are you sure—"

"Wheeler," Briggs interrupts with a meaningful look. "We're going on a monster murder spree tonight. Are superpowers so insane?"

She shrugs.

"And she's just... gone," Nancy clarifies slowly, brows knitting together.

"With the wind," Mack says wistfully.

"You need to get over that movie. It's so old—"

"You're so old."

Jon snorts. Briggs is only about five months older than Mack, but usually he milks it.

"So the girl," Nancy says pointedly, forcing attention back to the matter at hand. "Unaccounted for. What about the rest of the kids? What'd they know about the monster?"

"They didn't," Mack pipes up. "They were confused as shit."

"Did you tell them?"

"No," Briggs sighs, "but someone wasn't exactly subtle in his questioning—"

"Oh, big whoop, they'll figure out there's a monster. They already think they're going through an interdimensional gate—"

His friends' banter fades into the background and Briggs glances around the diner, The Cure streaming from the jukebox near the front door and blanketing everything in quiet noise. Briggs knows this one. Boys Don't Cry.

His father used to say that, after he got mean, after he stopped teaching Briggs to speak Spanish and started teaching him to bury his emotions not six feet under but twelve, just in case. After the bottom of the nearest bottle of beer became more important than his son's smile, his wife's laugh, the overdue bills on the cracking kitchen counter.

Briggs shakes his head like the memory will bounce right out, tuning back into the conversation.

"The pen is mightier than the sword," Mack says sagely. Nancy blinks.

"Yeah, because I'm sure you can just murder it with a pencil, Mack," Jon says wryly.

"Lead poisoning is very real."

"Cure it with coffee," someone says brightly, and Briggs looks up to see Laura sliding four platters onto the table. How the hell can she hold that many plates at once? She leans over to the next booth and grabs the steaming coffee pot she'd set there. "Order up."

"Shit, that smells good," Mack groans, making a grab for the pot. He glances up at Laura. "You are my savior."

Her cheeks color as she smiles half-heartedly. "Just my morning coffee fueling yours," she jokes. "Don't actually take medical advice from me. Please." Her eyes dart to Nancy and back to the coffee pot, gaze following its movement as Mack pours not one cup of coffee but two, because of course Briggs isn't going to drink it and apparently Mack's decided he just doesn't need his cup for anything else.

"You're right. By the way. About lead poisoning, I mean," Laura blurts as Briggs shoves his fork into a mound of scrambled eggs.

Mack tilts his head in question, and Nancy parts her lips like she's going to comment and then decides against it as Laura plows on. "One time in second grade I stabbed myself with a pencil and—I mean, I didn't get lead poisoning, but my dad made a joke about it and then I got really in my head and convinced myself I was gonna die for like, three days," she rambles, wringing her hands together. Then she clamps her mouth shut, awkwardly jabs a thumb over her shoulder as a gotta run, and beelines toward the counter.

Briggs blinks.

"Well, she's nice," Mack says.

"How did we get on the topic of lead poisoning?" Briggs asks, shoving a piece of toast in his mouth.

"Don't talk with your mouth open, freak," Mack says. Jon snorts.

"Weapons," he says in explanation. "We need to get stuff."

"I was just reminding them that violence is never the best option," Mack says. Then he shrugs. "Not actually. In this case. I feel like stabbing is definitely better than writing a letter, but only in this scenario." Briggs leans forward and steals a fry from Jon's plate.

"Fuck off," Jon says with no heat, and Briggs winks as he eats the fry.

The plan comes together quickly enough, despite all the unanswered questions burning more than the bitter coffee Briggs tried when he was fourteen and then never drank again.

The monster is drawn to blood—Barb's cut, the deer's wounds. And it hunts alone. It shouldn't be hard to lure it into a trap with blood as bait, and if they play their cards right, they'll be able to incapacitate it before it gets to them.

"So what're the odds I need to write my last will, you think?" Briggs asks, only half-kidding. He has a bad feeling about this, the kind that twists his stomach in knots that wrap around his heart.

"Can I have the Jeep if you kick it?" Mack asks. Briggs flips him off and Mack looks at his half-finished plate. "Also, are you gonna finish that?"

A lone piece of toast and a pile of hash browns remain on Briggs' plate. He hands Mack the toast and starts in on the hash browns, ignoring Mack's whining about how he eats too slow for a normal human being.

After pooling cash on the table, making sure to leave some for Laura, Nancy goes up to the counter to pay. Jon offers probably three separate times, but Nancy brushes him off, saying she wants to talk to Laura anyway.

Outside the restaurant, Mack knocks Jon with an elbow lightly. "Hey," he says. "We're gonna figure this out."

Jon smiles unconvincingly, ducking his head. "Yeah, I—yeah, I know."

"We're here, man." Mack claps him on the back and Briggs gives Jon a two-fingered salute when he looks back up, a silent show of solidarity.

"Thanks," Jon murmurs.

Briggs nods. "We got you."

"You got tools and shit at your place, right?" Jon checks, and Briggs nods. "I'll drop you there and we can meet back up at the hunting store."

Nancy pushes through the diner door then, effectively sending the three boys walking toward the car and leaving the passenger seat for her without argument.

The ride is short and checkered with muttered theories about the monster's origins, lazy attempts to place it in the geography of the magical dark other-world. Just minutes later, Jon slows to a stop outside Briggs' place and allows him to step out, waving before heading back in the direction of town.

Across the street, a woman in neatly pressed clothes with a shock of blonde hair emerges from Mr. Clarke's house. Briggs' first thought is wow, he finally got a girlfriend, but upon second glance, this woman isn't someone Briggs thinks Mr. Clarke would go for. Not that he's at all well-versed in his former science teacher's dating life, he supposes.

The woman notes him staring and unflinchingly tilts her head and appraises Briggs, tapping a clipboard tucked under her arm. He lifts his arm in an awkward half-wave, and the woman smiles, staring at him a moment more before opening the door to her car.

He doesn't like her.

Briggs shakes off her unsettling energy as he ducks into the garage. Corey's bike leans against the wall, its kickstand evidently still broken from her summer adventures. He makes a note to fix it when this all settles down, letting the relief that Corey's still home settle warm in his chest.

He grabs a hammer and some stakes from an old project and tosses them in his backpack, then searches out a flashlight and a length of rope. Then he pushes through the interior garage door and calls, "Corey?"

"What?"

She emerges from her room with a backpack half-open and slung over one shoulder to the front, Dustin's hat tucked under her arm, ready to go.

"Where are..."

"Mike and Lucas are being morons and fighting like they're first-graders," she informs him with a roll of her eyes, shoving her walkie-talkie into her backpack and zipping it up. Too fast, like she doesn't want Briggs to know what's in it. "Dustin can't control them. So I am going to make them hug until they sort out their shit."

"And then..."

Corey shrugs. "Could take all day. They're stupid." But she doesn't meet his eyes.

Briggs feels like he's waging the same war day after day in his heart and his head. Is she really going to settle shit between the boys? If she is, will that take longer than two minutes? If the kids just go out and look for the gate...

But Briggs is pretty sure he knows where it is. And he's pretty sure they can't get to it, not on their own. And if he doesn't go out and get this goddamn monster...

"Okay." Briggs sighs. He's been sighing a lot lately. "Have fun." Corey grins brightly and makes for the door, but at the last minute Briggs grabs her by the elbow.

"What now?" she complains, and Briggs just steps forward and wraps his arms around her.

"Oh," she says, but she hugs him back.

"Be safe," he whispers. Corey stiffens in his arms. Then she pulls back and looks at him, looks at the bag over his own shoulder. She meets his eyes.

"You too."

▮▮▮

There are so many things in this store that Briggs would love to use to hit Tommy Hagan.

An obnoxious wall banner announces, "AUTUMN SALE! ARMY SURPLUS 30% OFF," and a gun-wielding mannequin takes aim to the left of it. Lines of signs read "GUNS," "GUNS," and more "GUNS." Briggs strolls through the aisles, grimacing at a bear head, rolling his eyes at the prices on spools of rope, fake birds.

"This shit's crazy," he mutters as Jon and Nancy come to a stop in front of a low shelf. "What?" He nudges Jon aside to look at what they're observing.

It's a bear trap.

"Jesus," he says, but Jon and Nancy exchange a glance and Briggs knows they're leaving with it.

The man at the counter is a classic hick, salt-and-pepper goatee framed by the taxidermic animals on the wall behind him, and he just stares blankly as Jon and Nancy unload their horde of things teenagers shouldn't possess onto the counter. Lighter fluid. Metal stakes. Another hammer, because apparently Briggs' wasn't enough.

Briggs can't even watch the rest of this interaction.

"Meet you out there," he sighs, shoving a five into Jon's hands and dragging Mack out the door before he can protest. Briggs parked the Jeep right in front of Jon's Galaxie on the curb of the hunting store.

He leans against its side, lets Mack pace in front of him.

"Hey," he says. Mack turns to him in question. Briggs shifts his weight from foot to foot, knowing he needs to do this for Mack but really hoping his friend doesn't break down crying, because Briggs will have absolutely no idea what to do in that situation. "Let's talk about you for a minute."

Mack sputters, "What?"

"Listen, man. I've been worrying about Corey and shit, and I know you need to talk about it. Barb's missing. You like her. You don't have to pretend nothing's wrong."

Mack swallows hard. "Walk and talk?" he asks, and Briggs follows him down the road.

"I don't, um. I just want her to be okay. But we're acting on it. It's—I mean, there's nothing else we can do, right?"

Briggs stuffs his hands in his pockets. "Yeah. I just—I know that doesn't make it any easier. So if you need to vent, I get it."

"I'm just worried," Mack murmurs. "What if she's..."

When he trails off, Briggs assumes it's for emotional reasons, to let the word dead and all its connotations hang in the air. But then Mack nudges him in the side and points with wide eyes toward the theater across the road from Royal Furniture.

"Motherfucker," Briggs says.

Painted across the marquee in fat red letters, just underneath "All The Right Moves," is "STARRING NANCY THE SLUT WHEELER."

"Why..."

Mack just blinks at the sign, gaping.

"I'm going to punch someone today," Briggs tells him lowly, evenly.

"Briggs—"

Then he hears it. The laugh he hates more than any sound in the world.

He's running before Mack can stop him, and he's dimly aware of Jon and Nancy crossing the road toward them but he's already gone, into the alley around the corner.

"Son of a bitch," he whispers. "Hey!"

"Briggs!" Mack shouts from around the corner, but Nancy gets there first.

"Aw, hey there, princess!" Carol says sweetly as Nancy storms down the alleyway. She's flanked by Nicole and Steve, Tommy busy spraying awful words onto the wall.

But it's not Tommy who looks at Briggs first.

It's Steve.

His expression is unreadable, lips pressed into a straight line and brows slightly drawn together. Angry, annoyed, concerned, who fucking knows with Steve Harrington?

Steve looks past Briggs to Nancy and his expression goes even tighter. Briggs doesn't want to watch. He doesn't want to hear, doesn't want to do anything that doesn't involve his fist meeting someone else's face—

Nancy slaps Steve.

"Oh, shit," he says before he can stop himself. The sound of her slap rings through the alley, lost in the sounds of their immature audience crowing.

"What is wrong with you?" Nancy demands. Nicole presses a hand over her mouth, laughing.

"What's wrong with me? What's wrong with you? I was worried about you," Steve says in one fast breath, like he's scolding a child. "I can't believe that I was actually worried about you." He scoffs, taking a half-step backward, and almost looks...

Briggs decides he has no room for sympathy right now. Carol's talking and Nancy's saying something and Steve is talking back, but Briggs zeros in on the guy he came here for. The guy who's spray-painting the wall not with propaganda about Nancy, but about Jon.

In the same messy red letters: Byers is a perv.

"Hagan!" he barks, and Tommy turns with that stupid, arrogant smirk. He shakes the can of spray paint at him joyfully.

"Want in?"

Briggs can't take it anymore.

So he doesn't.

His fist collides with Hagan's cheekbone and sends pain shooting from his knuckles to his shoulder, and Briggs savors it.

Carol screams. Briggs grins.

Tommy wails on him right back, fist coming up to sock Briggs in the ribs, and then they're going, spinning, fists flying, and Briggs knows he's winning, knows he's getting in more punches than Tommy's landing, and everything in his body is singing with something akin to relief because he needed this, needed a fight, and here it is.

His knuckles are wet, coated with blood, and he doesn't care. Somewhere he registers Nancy panicking, Mack shouting and trying to pull the boys off each other, some altercation between Jon and Steve on the other side of the him, but all that matters is Tommy Hagan and the untamable river of anger racing through Briggs' veins instead of blood. Or maybe it is blood, a river made of blood and anger, one and the same, burning him from the inside out. Briggs laughs humorlessly as Tommy's fist collides with his cheekbone, and Briggs goes for the ribs.

It's a blur.

Briggs hears Carol shout before he registers the sirens. Cops.

Carol and Nicole bolt, and it takes a moment for Briggs to realize Mack has started running, too. Fuck.

Briggs has Tommy up against the wall, he knows how this looks, and—and Tommy isn't worth that.

"Damn it," he hisses, pushing Tommy away and bolting down the alley, right past the cops, trying to catch up to Mack and assuming Jon and Nancy are right on his heels, but—

But they're not.

Briggs peeks back around the corner. Jon is pressed into the hood of a cop car.

"Fuck," he mutters. "Fuck, fuck—"

One of the officers looks back in Briggs' direction, and he cusses and bolts back down the street, ducking into the next alley. Adrenaline sings in his bones, his blood.

Panting against the brick wall, Briggs listens to the sound of the cop cars peeling out of the alley. Jesus.

He waits until the rumble of the engines fades, then starts back down the alley. He's gotta go to the station. He's gotta get Jon. Mack probably made it back to the Jeep already.

"Hey!"

Briggs keeps walking.

"Hey, wait."

"What?" Briggs snaps, turning to find Steve right behind him. The boy takes a step back, almost wary, before he speaks in a way more hesitant than usual.

"You, uh—you okay?"

"Are you fucking serious?" Briggs spits, throwing his hands out in a what the hell gesture. "Am I okay? Are—why the hell do you care, Harrington?" He's seething, fists clenched at his sides because if he doesn't keep them there, they're going to bloody up Steve's face even more.

Steve starts to shrug, but Briggs isn't taking that—not taking a shrug in a pathetic answer to the most burning question of his life. "No, answer me. Why? Because you act all high-and-mighty with your dipshit friends and then seem to think I'm an exception. You break Jon's camera and try to beat him in an alley and call Nancy a slut and then you ask if I'm okay? Well, I'm not, Steve, but I don't think you have the right to fucking care. If you're gonna be a jackass to my friends, you're gonna be a jackass to me, too."

"Briggs—"

He bristles at the sound of his name on Steve's lips, and he doesn't know why. It's just—outside of the familiarity of the pool, outside of Reyes and Harrington, outside of just being teammates with a rivalry, last names without meaning, he doesn't know what this is, how to navigate it.

Steve throws his arms up in exasperation. He groans, dragging both hands down his face.

"I don't fucking know why, okay? I don't know why I care so damn much, I don't understand it, the shit you do to me, okay?" Steve cries, hand going up to run through hair, his stupid, perfect hair. "I just—I don't know how to act with you, I don't know what to do."

Briggs starts to talk, doesn't know what the hell he's going to say but feels like he needs to say something, but Steve doesn't stop.

"You're so fucking distracting I didn't even realize what Tommy was doing until it was too late, and now you and Nancy and Jonathan and Mack probably all hate me and okay, that's fair, because I can't control myself. You make me—God, I just—I wanna—I feel like I need you to be closer all the damn time, and it's driving me insane, okay? You—you, Briggs, you're driving me insane."

Steve stands there with one hand knotted in his hair, panting, eyes wide as his own words circle back to him.

For maybe the first time in his sixteen years of life, Briggs is completely, utterly speechless.

Steve takes a step forward, hesitant, like he's scared Briggs will run away.

"You're different," he breathes, looking at the ground, taking another step. "Briggs. You're not like—not like my jackass friends. Or the rest of the swim team. Or—or Nancy, even. You're something else and I don't know what it is and it scares me."

And Briggs' heart is threatening to skyrocket right out of his chest, all the way to some planet that hasn't been discovered yet, because he feels that way, too.

"I'm different," Briggs says, voice low, challenging, almost, and Steve nods, even closer now.

"You're different."

"You're different, too," Briggs admits, voice kind of strangled in a weird way, and his face is on fire.

"Yeah?" Steve reaches for the collar of Briggs' swim jacket.

"Yeah."

Steve swallows, and Briggs watches his Adam's apple bob nervously.

Is this real?

Briggs takes an unconscious step back as Steve keeps walking, right up the wall. Right up to the wall.

Just like the alley outside the high school only days ago, when Briggs had his hands fisted in the collar of Steve's shirt, holding him against the brick wall. The parallel hits him like a blisteringly cold wave.

And so does that same feeling as last time. That desire to maybe punch Steve Harrington in the face or maybe do something entirely, world-alteringly different.

Steve's hand is still wrapped tight in Briggs' jacket, ragged breaths warming his skin as the brick digs into his shoulder blades, and he can't tear his eyes away from Steve's, has only seen that look a few times, in the locker room and here, and he whispers, voice hoarse with something he can't quite understand, "Steve."

"Yo, Harrington!"

Steve jumps away from the wall, from the proximity, from Briggs like he's hot coal, one hand flying up to fix his hair while the other frantically smoothes out his jacket, just as Tommy strides around the corner.

Briggs' heart gutters in his chest.

"Fuck's taking you so long?" He sees Briggs and outright guffaws, grabbing Carol by the elbow and pulling her in to look. "What're you still messin' with him for? What, are you some kind of fuckin' queer?" Carol's cackle bounces off the walls of the alley, burrowing into Briggs' nerves, fraying them at the edges.

"No!" Steve nearly shouts, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. "No! God, I—I—"

But then his gaze flickers over to Briggs. Briggs, who can't keep the hurt, the heat, the humiliation from his expression as Steve stutters like an idiot that no, no he's not.

Queer.

Steve's protests finally gutter out and his mouth hangs open, at a loss for words for once.

"Fuck you, Steve," Briggs grits out, hating how his voice comes out raw, hating the burning in his eyes and his chest and every part of him.

And then he walks away.

▮▮▮

a/n:

1. pain. sorry

2. i genuinely believe that tommy as a character is so awful that he would throw around the f-slur, but i refuse to write that. i just can't. obviously, i don't condone the usage of queer or queer-related language as an insult. that is never okay under any circumstances. so i let briggs punch tommy in the face. if the trigger warning above was not sufficient for the chapter contents, please let me know—i want this to be a safe space for everyone.

3. laura is an original character featured in stilestastic's amazing book, What We Do in the Shadows. do yourself a big fat favor and go read it rn!!!

[ word count | 7.2k ]